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Richard Branson-Backed Brother And Sister Team Bought Out By Reputation.com

With its second acquisition in as many months, Reputation.com announced it’s just bought out cloud-based password manager MySocialCloud. Reputation.com made news in June when it announced it was taking over PaperKarma, developers of an app that helps users eliminate their junk mail (real mail, not email).

Reputation is remaining tight-lipped on the details of the deal, declining to comment on acquisition price, MySocialCloud’s growth metrics, profitability or whether company leadership have accepted an earn-out settlement. Five members of the ten-person company will be moving north to San Francisco to work within the Reputation.com fold.

Scott Ferreira

MySocialCloud, which started up in 2011, has a unique story, underscored by an investment from headline-grabbing billionaire Richard Branson, Insight Venture Partners co-founder Jerry Murdock and Photobucket founder Alex Welch. The trio provided $1 million in startup capital to the California-based company.

The newly acquired firm was started by a brother and sister team—Scott and Stacey Ferreira (ages 22 and 20, respectfully). The two developed the company while on summer break.

“My brother and I started MySocialCloud the summer after I graduated high school,” said Stacey Ferreira. “Our parents gave us one more summer of, ‘you guys go and do whatever you want to do,’ and we decided that we wanted to start an online password manager simply because my brother had an Excel spreadsheet with all his names and passwords and his computer crashed and he lost all of that.”

Shiv Prakash

Recruiting the talents of co-founder and current company CTO Shiv Prakash, now 27, the startup team designed a cloud-based product that allows one-click logins for any number of passwords, stolen password detection services and a monitoring system that can wave a red flag when any site on which a user has an account is breached or compromised.

That first summer working on the prototype, Ferreira noticed a Twitter Tweet from Richard Branson, asking for $2,000 charity donations in exchange for entrance to Miami cocktail party that the renowned entrepreneur would attend. The Ferreiras borrowed the money from their parents and took the trip, taking the opportunity to tell their story to Branson, who in turn introduced them to Murdock when their prototype was finished. “He loved our ambition and our willingness to just go and build this product,” Ferreira said.

“With MySocialCloud, we’re adding a highly valued platform, a creative team, new capability and customers to our portfolio,” said Reputation.com CEO and Founder Michael Fertik as part of a prepared company release.

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